Set of mugs for Diane Douglas

Edgar Miller
1987
Set of 3 | Dia 8.25, H 9.2 cm
Painted and glazed porcelain

Edgar Miller was largely self-educated in the various forms of traditional and folk art from around the world, and the scope of his interests helped shape his artistic philosophy throughout his career. Miller was also keenly aware of the fact that commodification of art in the early 20th century had given rise to a new way of classifying traditional art media, by art collectors, sellers, and critics.

Throughout his career, Miller fought against what he saw was an artificially cultivated distinction between "high art" and "low art," which he felt considerably overvalued high art at the expense of low art. Art which had been produced for centuries under a patronage model, in media like oil painting and stone or cast sculpture, was generally considered high art; the realm of low art was relegated to the design-work of ceramics, woodcarving, and other objects considered domestic.

Practitioners of the so-called low arts—predominantly women and immigrants in the US at the time—had increasingly fallen in status as unrecognized art laborers, rather than the true artists that they were. For Miller, the distinction was arbitrary, and he believed art produced in any media and by any artist had intrinsic value. An object was considered art because of the technique and heritage it displayed, rather than its material cost, perceived luxury, or market appeal.

Objects such as these hand-painted mugs, which Miller likely executed within a day, were, in the moment he was creating them, as important to him as any other artwork that he produced. This mug set was produced in 1987 as gifts to Diane Douglas, a friend of Miller's during the end of his career when he had returned to Chicago.